Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:windows-category ]I’ve been using Windows since, well, before it was really Windows Winking smile.

When the developers preview of Windows 8 came out a few months ago I downloaded it and it was quite apparent it wasn’t meant for anything but development, which was fine.

The consumer preview on the other hand came out on February 29th and obviously it was meant for the masses to take a look at.

It’s no secret I’m a big fan of the Metro interface on both the Zune HD and Windows Phone, but does it translate to a desktop PC?

Kinda, I guess…

It does work, and Microsoft has spent a lot of time between the developers and the consumer preview’s working on the keyboard interface.

It looks VERY lovely, I have no doubt that on a tablet PC it’s going to be a killer OS.  On the PC, I’m less convinced.

I had an older Acer Aspire 751 netbook/notebook lying around so I decided to see how it would run on that.  The hardware more than meet’s MS’s minimums, but even so, the interface felt a little sluggish.

Microsoft has been in the last few years really been pushing the boundaries on its interfaces (from the ribbon bar to Metro) and it’s worked out well for them so far.

I suspect on a desktop or more powerful PC, Windows 8 will do just fine, but on the lower end hardware it may struggle to give that smooth Metro experience we’ve all come to expect.

Of course there’s still lots of time for Microsoft to optimize before Windows 8 is release Winking smile.

The biggest grip I have with the consumer preview is the “consumer” part.  No domain membership is supported so I won’t be converting any of my day-to-day PC’s to Windows 8 until we see a final version.

PS Vita

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:mobile-category ]I have a long history of handheld gaming, from my first dedicated Donkey Kong LCD unit to my first Atari Lynx I’ve always had one around.

The last generation of portable gaming from Sony (the PSP) didn’t really do much for me, I have an original PSP1000 that I used for the first while, but for the last few years it’s just been sitting on a shelf collecting dust.

Because of this I hesitated in picking up the PS Vita.  However the hardware specs and the display finally overcame my concerns.

The first impression I had on taking the Vita from the box was “Where’s the battery?”.  The unit is VERY light in comparison to the PSP, I guess all that hardware for the UMD drive really did add a lot of weight Winking smile.

Before powering up the unit I installed the 8g memory card I picked up, this is perhaps the biggest issue I have so far with the Vita, YET ANOTHER MEMORY CARD STANDARD from Sony.  Why?  Ok, I know why, they’re charging $99 for a 32g card.  So they’re making about $98 in profit.

Once you power it up, the second thing you notice is the display, it’s simply gorgeous.

Sony then takes you through the setup of the device and getting you connected to the PlayStation network.  This is pretty straight forward, except if you happen to use MAC filtering on your WiFi, in which case there’s not way to find the MAC address during the setup process.  You have to setup a fake account, then go find the MAC address and then setup your real account.

The touch interface takes a bit of getting use to.  There’s not good overlap in the physical controls and the touch interface, they seem mutually exclusive at times.

Sony has decided to move away from the classic XMB standard they’ve used since the PS3 debuted, but not far enough if you ask me.  The new interface uses what look like a button you would pin on your shirt and they wave all over the place as soon as you move between screens.

It’s not ugly, but pretty isn’t a work I would use to describe it either.

Having used the text heavy Metro interface on Windows Phone and Zune for quite a while, you really understand how bad icon based interfaces really are once you see the Vita.

Of course as with all new hardware these days, an update was pretty much required as soon as I power on the device.

When I picked up the Vita from the store, I wanted to get a copy of Hot Shots Golf at the same time, however it was out of stock.  I figured I’d go to another store later to get a copy but once I got the system online I decided to try to purchase it from the online store.

The process was easy enough but a quirk of the store was the price for the game.  In the physical store the game was priced at $29.99+tax, but the online store had it at ~$34 but no tax.  It works out to be the same price (the online copy was an extra 20 cents if I remember right) but strange in how they show the cost.

And really, the online copy should cost less, there’s no physical media for Sony to provide so they’re just making more money on the same game.

The controls on the Vita are a mixed bag.  The dual analog sticks are obviously a BIG improvement over the PSP, but the 8 buttons are not nearly as nice as the PSP’s.  The touch interfaces work as do the cameras.  The flush style PS, start and select buttons are a little annoying, but no so much as to be a big issue.

Overall it’s a slick piece of hardware and I’m not unhappy that I bought it, now I’ll have to see if it gets more use than my PSP did.

The Good:

  • Very light
  • Dual analogue sticks
  • Processing power up to wazoo
  • Beautiful display
  • Input options galore

The not so bad/not so good:

  • Kind of cheap buttons
  • Weird pricing in the store
  • Too many control choices for some developers means one or the other method is used instead of both

The Bad:

  • Memory card tax
  • No way to find MAC address during setup

How scared must Bell be?

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:internet-category ]I’ve had a Bell phone line since I was a teenager (in fact I had three when I was a teenager running a BBS in my basement).  There as NEVER been a time I didn’t have a landline handy, however over the last 5 years or so it was only “just in case”.

As of February 22nd 2012, I no longer have a Bell phone line.

And Bell sent me a nice little “Thank You” card in the mail making sure I knew if there was anything they could do to win back my business to just give them a call.

Yea right, exactly how scared must Bell be about its traditional phone service at this point?

Sure, like newspapers, there’s going to be an older demographic (or those that can’t get high-speed Internet) that will continue to subscribe to phone service, but the vast majority are moving away from landlines.  At some point there will be more ADSL lines than phone lines.

But Bell has to maintain phone service availability to every address, how much are they going to have subsidize landlines from other businesses (like ADSL) to make this commercially viable?

Bell is about to have to go through a significant transition, but it doesn’t seem like they’re ready.  While high density area’s like Toronto are starting to get FTTH, these are limited rollouts, Bell should be aggressively pushing FTTH out to their entire network.

If they don’t, they won’t just be loosing landlines in the future…

Dell Voice/Fongo/freephoneline.ca

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:internet-category ]I’ve been using a VOIP phone line as my home for a couple of years now, however the provider I was using has a few limitations I just don’t like so I’ve been looking for a new VOIP provider for the last few months.

My current provider has several things going for it:

  • Low cost.
  • North American long distance at no cost.  Other long distance destinations have very reasonable rates as well.
  • Voice mail to e-mail.

However they have several significant limits:

  • Over 7 long distance calls a day (no matter how long or short) is considered excessive use and you’ll be cut off.
  • While they claim there is no call length limit, there is of 90 minutes.
  • No number porting.

In general I could live with limits, but the number porting was a real killer, I’ve maintained my traditional land line while I used my VOIP line but its time to get a single solution.

About three years ago when I was first looking for a VOIP provider, I found freephoneline.ca (which operates under the Fongo company name)and found their business model interesting to say the least.  At that time I didn’t go with them mainly due to my uncertainty as to whether they would survive or not.

At the beginning of February as I was looking for a new VOIP provider, Fongo and Dell announced DellVoice.ca, which brought them back to my attention.

Fongo provides a free phone number and long distance across much of Canada (to pretty much all the major and minor cities and towns).  They do this though their softphone and advertising associated with them.  They support both Android and iOS applications with Blackberry coming soon.  Perhaps they’ll have Windows Phone support some day as well Winking smile.

They do offer a traditional VOIP access option as well for a one time fee of $50, which gives you all the configuration and passwords to setup any softphone or ATA to use with the service.

In addition they support number porting to the service.

Signing up for the service was straight forward, a quick webform and software down.  During the setup process you get your new phone number and have 5 chances to change it if you don’t like what you get.  However after 5 numbers your stuck with whatever you get Winking smile.

After that, you simply fill in another form (with payment details) to get your VOIP unlock and after about 10 minutes total I had my ATA configured to use the service.

Call quality is good and long distance rates to non-free locations is reasonable.  However they do use a credit system where you have to by credits before you can make a long distance call.  This is a little draconian, but not a huge barrier for me.

I submitted by number porting request and they indicated it would take 3 to 4 weeks to port the number.  Number porting cannot be done through the web interface, you have to call their support line, but there was no wait to get to a representative.

It does take a few days to receive the form from them through e-mail, but it’s straight forward to fill out and I faxed it in without issue.

To my pleasant surprise, the number porting was done in just 7 business days, so much faster than expected.  I didn’t run in to any issues during the porting process at all.  Bell automatically terminates your phone line for you once the porting is complete so there’s nothing more to do.

So far I’m quite happy with the new service, I haven’t had any downtime and have not found any limits so far.  One small quirk I have found is that they don’t support 310 numbers.  So ordering pizza from your favorite place may require a little bit of searching for their 800 number instead of their 310 number.

The only thing I miss from my old VOIP provider is the voice mail to e-mail option.  Fongo is adding new features so perhaps this will be one of them soon.

The new iPad… just like the old iPad!

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:mobile-category ]I was following the Engadget live blog feed from the iPad 3 announcement the other day and two things kind of struck me:

  • Apple REALLY wants this to be the post PC era
  • Tim Cook is really trying hard to maintain the reality distortion field Steve Jobs created

Post-PC?

Why Apple wants to be in the post PC era is pretty obvious, it failed to conquer the PC era so the best why to win is to say we’ve passed that now.  It’s a good marketing strategy, but are we really past the PC?  Or are we just in a lull between PC revolutions?

The more I use my TouchPad, the more I feel there’s something big missing on current tablets, and I think that it’s a proper OS.  My tablet usage is pretty much down to reading e-mail and using an RDP client to get to a Windows desktop so I can do what I really want to do.  Things like going to a website that has a login and not having to remember the password because EVERY desktop browser has a built-in password store.

I think Microsoft is going to get a lot of things right with Windows 8 on tablets and that may be the real PC revolution that kills the post-pc era Winking smile.

Reality?

Steve Jobs was famous for single mindedly pursuing his version of reality, no matter what anyone else thought.  That cult of personality really helped Apple and Tim Cook is now trying to maintain the same effect.

A quote from Tim Cook at the press conference:

We are redefining the category that Apple created with the original iPad.

Really?  Because all I see is a high-resolution screen upgrade, a processor upgrade, a camera upgrade and a wireless upgrade.

The category already had all those features, the “new iPad” just did incremental upgrades to them.  So not so much “redefining” as simply “this years model”.

And let’s talk about the name, is Apple so scared to move on versions numbers these days that they now have to get rid of them entirely?

This is really the second lackluster product announcement from Apple, the iPhone 4s was similarly just incremental improvements in the hardware.

And speaking of the 4s, where’s Siri on the iPad?  They can’t claim it doesn’t have the processing power like they did with the iPhone 4.

I suspect Apple is going to have a long slide downhill over the next decade, but they’ve turned it around before, maybe they will again.